Tsarnaev Is Getting Care and High Security

Suspect Held in Massachusetts Facility For Federal Prisoners Needing Treatment

ENLARGE

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is an inmate at a federal medical center at Fort Devens, in Massachusetts.
Associated Press

By

Christopher Weaver

April 28, 2013 8:30 p.m. ET

The federal medical center in Massachusetts where the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing is being held blends high-security prison cells with hospital rooms.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19 years old, is being treated for gunshot wounds in his throat, head and legs that he received during confrontations with police days after the April 15 bombing. He was listed as being in fair condition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center before being transferred early Friday to the Federal Medical Center Devens, about 40 miles west of Boston at Fort Devens army base.

Devens is equipped to handle the full spectrum of federal prisoners, from minimum-security white-collar criminals to violent felons who would be held at maximum-security penitentiaries if it weren't for their medical conditions. The latter are generally kept in single-person cells and isolated from lower-risk prisoners.

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Precautions prevent prisoners from escaping, and protect them from one another.

Rooms with steel doors and wickets—prison lingo for slots used to pass food—can be equipped with hospital beds and patient-monitoring equipment to keep violent or high-risk offenders under lockdown, even during treatment, prison spokesman John Colautti said. When patients must be moved—for example, to receive X-rays—staff members take extra precautions, he said.

The site, which occupies a wooded corner of the army base, is a cluster of institutional buildings surrounded by a double fence.

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The 60 on-staff nurses and health professionals are trained corrections officers, who spend three weeks each year practicing firearms skills and techniques to restrain prisoners, among other things, at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Ga., Mr. Colautti said.

Government and hospital officials didn't comment on the reason for the transfer or Mr. Tsarnaev's current condition, but experts said the higher security offered at Devens likely contributed to the decision. They also said officials would seek to keep the suspect close to Boston for potential court proceedings.

U.S. Marshals declined to comment, referring questions to prison officials.

For guards and doctors at Devens, "it's pretty much business as usual," Mr. Colautti said. He noted that the facility routinely secures dangerous and high-profile prisoners. Twenty of the 1,044 prisoners in the medical prison are serving life sentences, he said.

The Joint Commission, a nonprofit self-regulator for health groups, has accredited Devens to provide outpatient, long-term care and mental-health services. As of 2011, the facility had met its goals in all nine categories listed for outpatient health services, including for hand-washing, medication labeling and preventing certain medical errors.

Sometimes, if prisoners have a major health problem, such as a heart attack, they can be transferred temporarily to nearby hospitals.

"We contract with just about every hospital in the area," Mr. Colautti said, adding it is a security precaution that makes it difficult for people on the outside to know where to look for prisoners who have been moved to harder-to-secure facilities.

The range of Devens inmates also includes a cadre of low-security prisoners who cut the lawns and do other groundskeeping work. Most high-security prisoners are sick while there and are often transferred to other facilities when their health improves.

Some prisoners have chronic medical conditions that could require indefinite treatment. For instance, Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of the hedge fund Galleon Group who was convicted of insider trading in 2011, is serving time at Devens, according to the Bureau of Prisons. He suffers from a litany of health problems, including kidney disease that his lawyers said ahead of sentencing were likely to require dialysis treatment.

About 100 Devens inmates get dialysis and are likely to remain there for the duration of their sentences, Mr. Colautti said.

Despite readier access to medical services than in other prisons, not all inmates prefer incarceration at the six Federal Medical Centers operated by the prison bureau, where many live under even greater restrictions than at typical facilities.

"They mix all these people together of different custody levels—you're like locked down," said Larry Levine, founder of Wall Street Prison, a firm that advises white-collar inmates on navigating the prison system. The precautions that make Mr. Tsarnaev inaccessible to other prisoners can be a drag for low-security inmates. "I would rather choose the regular institution just because of the lifestyle," said Mr. Levine, who served 10 years in federal prisons, during which he was treated at an outside hospital for heart disease.

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